 Moving on to a very exciting presentation. I'm going to ask David Miller from the Range of Lace Heritage Trust to jump on and introduce this, our virtual loon cruise. And I will say just before David starts that we have a very exciting special guest for the second half of this hour. The video will last for just over half an hour. And then I have asked, on the last minute, Maine Audubon's wildlife ecologist, Tracy Hart, to join us. Tracy manages our Maine Audubon loon count and knows all about loons. So she will be on the second half of the hour to help answer questions and talk about Maine Audubon's work with the loons. So I'm going to start sharing my screen. If David, you'd like to do an introduction. Thanks, Nick. Yeah, I just want to give you a couple minutes of context around this loon cruise. So we went out last Sunday morning on Rangeley Lake with Kevin Sinet, who runs a series of loon cruises during the summer. Rangeley Regional Lace, cruises and kayaking, it's called. We're joined by two biologists, one Danielle Daria from Maine Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, who may be on this Zoom call. And Alex Dalton from the Biodiversity Research Institute, both tons of experience on loons. It was a stormy, relatively cold, windy day. But we got great footage thanks to Maine Mountain Media, who turned this around in about 48 hours into a finished production. So sit back and enjoy and come up and see us next year. Come up any time to take a loon cruise with Kevin. This area has a wealth of loons and other wildlife as we've been hearing about. So please sit back and enjoy. So we do some introductions around the circle first. For myself, David Miller, I'm the director of Maine Lake Saturday's Trust. I've been here for about two years or so. And consider it like the best job in the world, as far as I know. That's me. I'm Danielle Dioria, I'm with the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. And I'm in our bird group. So I specialize on birds like loons and herons and other marsh birds and weeding birds. I'm Amanda Lilliberty. I do programs in Ponds for Rich Lake Service Trust. I'm Alex Dalton. I work with the Biodiversity Research Institute. And we do loon monitoring and rat deployment on rat wars in this area, as well as surveys nesting loons on smaller lakes and ponds throughout the range of the region. Rihanna Sennett, with Rangely Region Light Cruises. My daughter Rihanna, Kevin, the owner of Rangely Region Light Cruises, here living in Oquacic. Welcome aboard the Oquacic lady, too. So I'm Danielle Dioria, I'm a wildlife biologist with the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. And one of the species that I focus on for the department are loons. And our role with managing loons in the state is more of like a facilitation and coordination role. We work with a lot of other partner organizations and researchers and just kind of make sure that what everybody's doing kind of makes sense. And we are kind of in charge of understanding their population on a statewide level. So that's where working with other partners really is an efficient way of doing that with such a large state and such a large loon population. Yeah, my name is Alex Dalton. I'm a wildlife biologist with the Biodiversity Research Institute. I've been studying loons with BRI since 2015. It's with my time split between Massachusetts and Northern New England here in Maine. And I've been the field supervisor for this project since 2016. And the work that we do centers around the loon population in the Range of the Lakes region, primarily deploying and maintaining nest rafts on some of the hydropower reservoirs in the region as a mitigation strategy against the effects of fluctuating water level on loon nesting. And we also study loons on small ponds and lakes throughout this region and have been banding loons in the Rangeley region since the mid-90s. I think 1994 is the first loon that Dave Evers, my CEO, banded up here. And we've been color banding loons ever since. That's a huge part of my job up here. You can stand at the high ponds. You can see it flying in and out of here. Another eagle flying over there. Another eagle flying. Yep. A late July last year, one of our wardens got a call of a dead bald eagle floating on Highland Lake in Bridgeton. And when he went out to check it out, he also found a dead loon chick right nearby. And so, you know, it was kind of interesting, but as always with eagles, we usually, if we collected dead bald eagle that we're not sure what happened to it, we want to know if it was shot. So he took it to a vet to get x-rayed. There was no sign of the eagle being shot, but they did notice a wound to its chest. And, you know, something had hit its chest and opened it up a little bit. So, you know, they collected the eagle and the loon chick and then we were kind of wondering what happened with having a dead loon chick next to a dead eagle. It seemed like most likely something happened to the eagle because of that dead loon chick, that the eagle had most likely gone after the loon chick and that possibly the adult loon had actually gone after the eagle. So we took, we collected both the eagle and the chick. We took them to a lab in Hampshire that did a necropsy, which is basically an autopsy on a wild animal to see what actually happened. And we wanted them to pay close attention to that wound to the eagle's chest and see if it was consistent at all with the beak of a loon because we know loons will attack whether it's each other or potential predators with their beak. They'll come up from under the water at full speed and come up towards the chest of another loon or maybe another duck or something else that's in the area. And sure enough, the measurements and everything of that opening in the eagle's chest and its sternum were consistent with a loon's bill. So we're, and it went straight to the heart of the eagle so that eagle died pretty instantly. And we're pretty sure that it was most likely the adult loon that actually stabbed the eagle in the chest and killed it instantly. And it was most likely because the eagle had gone after the chick. There were puncture wounds in the chick that were consistent with an eagle's talons. So that loon was trying to fend off the eagle and protect possibly its other chick as well. So the major threats to loons in Maine and even in the Northeast and throughout their range. One of the big ones that we're seeing is lead poisoning. And that's from things like lead fishing tackle. So a lot of states, including Maine, have implemented new regulations that outlaw certain sizes of lead fishing tackle that loons are susceptible to picking up whether it's picking up lead from the bottom of the lake. They pick up stones to help digest their food. And so sometimes they might pick up a lead sinker or a jig or they might actually go after a fish that a line has been cut. And so there's still lead tackle attached to that fish. So that's one of the major causes of loon mortality, at least amongst our adult population or healthy loon adult population. We see a lot of boat strikes and that's becoming more common these days where just people aren't paying attention to what's out there. And so we're seeing blunt trauma, whether from a boat or even from other loons or other predators, things striking them. There's sometimes fishing line entanglement that will cause a loon to die because it prevents them from being able to feed and take care of itself. So in Maine right now, we're actually, we have a program, we've partnered with Maine Audubon to implement a program called the Lead Tackle Buyback Program where anglers can go to certain retailers, bring in some of their lead fishing tackle and they actually get a voucher for $10 for an ounce of lead. And that can go towards buying non-lead tackle. So that's a way to try to get people to get rid of their lead tackle and use non-lead tackle in fishing. Loons are a northern breeding species so anything that's gonna affect both the temperature, the intensity of storms, that kind of thing could have an effect on loons and their ability to nest successfully and raise young successfully. So in some areas, they've done studies where the higher temperatures and higher frequency of rainfalls or intensity of storms is actually negatively affecting nesting and even things, certain parasites that might come with climate change, come with increased temperatures in certain regions. These things move around globally so they can become more susceptible to new pathogens and parasites as our climate is changing. Alex can also speak to this as well but so Biodiversity Research Institute has a program called Restore the Call where they've actually taken loon chicks from states where they have a healthy loon population and brought them translocated to Massachusetts where they're trying to reestablish their loon population and increase their loon population. And so by capturing chicks in Maine they can transport them quickly down to Massachusetts. They raise them in pens on a lake. It's actually a lake complex where there's plenty of opportunities for loons to nest. So the hope is that those loons that are released and released on those lakes down in Massachusetts will return in a couple of years to start breeding down there. So they're trying to reestablish the population down there. They have a limited population. They used to have more, so. With this translocation effort we've translocated 24 loon chicks from Upstate New York in Maine to southeastern Massachusetts. And as of, well, as of earlier this week we have eight chicks that have returned as adults and there's actually one individual from Greenville Cove here on Rangeley Lake that is now part of a territorial pair in southeastern Massachusetts. So I would call that a success so far. We haven't seen any nesting yet but it's still a little early for them. And that was a chick that was translocated in 2017 and now it's already back out and part of a territorial pair in southeastern Massachusetts. So early results are, it's looking pretty good. What we're seeing here right now, you know, the pair together at the nest site and one loon sitting on the nest, pulling that nest material in, it is really uncommon to stumble across that situation. I mean, just the likelihood of it happening when we happen to be out here is pretty wild. And it is quite a treat to see here at the Rangeley birding festival. They take turns and it's pretty equally split from studies that we've done, just looking at who's sitting on the nest more often with gamecams, it's pretty equally split. And as far as like finding the nest site, it's something they will also do together. If they're already sitting up here, they've probably laid an egg, if not two already. And the typical incubation period is around 28 days. You say 28 to 32. And yeah. So in a month, we can expect to see some checks out here. If everything goes well and the water level doesn't come up too much and that eagle over there doesn't come after them too much. Earlier than this, you know, if we were out here just a couple of days ago, we would maybe have seen them swimming together, poking into little coves on the shoreline, investigating real estate, doing some tire kicking and eventually they settle on a spot. Our banding studies and other banding studies have shown that loons don't mate for life. And I think the average partnership, you know, span is around five years before they start to change over. But, you know, some pairs have been together longer and some pairs are only together for a year. And we even have it happen that partners switch over the course of the nesting season. So the oldest band loon on this project or in this region is on on Vagog Lake and she is now 32 and at least 32 because she was banded as an adult. And typically when a loon is banded as an adult, we assume that while they've been an adult breeding plumage for a couple of years before they actually started nesting. So we add six years to that. So we say she's at least 32 but could be much older than that. We need to establish a breeding territory to find a mate, establish a breeding territory. The first two to three years of their lives are out on the ocean before even coming back to their natal lakes. And then when they get to their natal lake, it's not assured that they're gonna have a nesting territory. And if you get to some lakes that have a higher density of loons, there's a lot of competition for nesting territory. And which, you know, I'm sure anybody who's watched loons on this boat has eventually at some point seen two loons kind of going at it with each other. And so finding a partner, establishing a territory and actually getting around to mating, we say about six years. And I wanna say, I just heard there was a banded loon in Michigan. It was either in Michigan or Wisconsin. I think it's 34, which yeah, it's quite impressive. And really though, we've only been banding loons since the late 80s. That's, so it could be a lot longer. We just don't know yet. Most common reason for loon relationships breaking up. Wow. Probably a lack of communication, you know? There's not one aggressor when it comes to breaking up loon nesting pairs. Males and females both fight each other. They both fight, you know, other territorial loons. And so, you know, often what will happen is that an older bird and the older bird in the nesting pair will eventually get forced out by some younger loon and that wants that territory. And the thing is, is the territory, it's a territory more than even the mating partner. It seems like, but you know, I'd still default to lack of communication, you know. So ways that people can help loons. One thing is they can get involved in the main loon count. It's an annual count where volunteers go out on lakes all across the state and count how many adults and chicks are out there. It's like a half hour event, a third Saturday in July, and that's run by Maine Audubon. And then other programs, lake owners can sign up to be loon smart. So there's certain things they can do on their property that help provide habitat for loons or at least protect the water quality of that lake. And so that's one thing that lake landowners can participate in. One important thing to remember, while out on the lakes and ponds here in Maine and admiring loons as they are something to admire is to give them their space. They come up here to breed and raise chicks and raise a family. And it's important that we give them their distance to do that. And so if you see a loon sitting on shore, just paddle away or back away from it, give it plenty of space, a few hundred feet. And if you're out on the lake and you come close to some loons and you start to hear them vocalize, especially if you hear what we call a tremolo call, please back up and give them their space. They come here to do one thing and that's not getting pestered by us. So they will appreciate it and we will too. Loons can tell us a lot about our own environmental health. They're at the top of their food web and in that they are an indicator species of many environmental contaminants that our environment might be subject to. And one big one is mercury. Mercury in the Northeast has affected loon populations since the 70s, if not before. And a huge reason for that is that industry in the Midwest produces particulate mercury into the atmosphere and prevailing wind currents bring that mercury to New England. And when that mercury is in the air as particulate, it comes out as rain into our environment, into wetland environments and lakes where bacteria in the soil actually make that mercury what we call bio available. And it goes into plankton, it goes into fish, it goes into loons and it accumulates in loons because they're a long life species that predominantly eats fish. So when we go out and ban loons, we're also taking blood samples and feather samples to look for contaminants like mercury. And our studies have shown and given us insight as to how environmentally healthy one lake is versus another due to particulate and accumulated mercury in that system. So loons play a vital role in their food web which also helps us to better understand the overall health of the food web in these aquatic ecosystems here in Maine. South Bog conservation area is about 1,000 acres. It's a true working forest, which means that we actively log it through according to our forestry management plan. We have just about five miles of trail that may enter along the South Bog stream. And we've put a lot of time and effort into South Bog stream. It is the only natural spawning ground for native brook trout in Rangeley Lake along with the trails that are offered on South Bog. It also offers a lot for birding, for fly fishing and for paddling. It's a very shallow, shallow cove leading into it. And so the plant life is unbelievable. It's a garden in the summer and definitely a nesting ground for birds. And as we saw earlier, eagles and moose can often be seen there. Rangeley Lake's Heritage Trust was founded in 1991. Since that time, we have conserved over 14,000 acres. Those 14,000 acres are open for public enjoyment. They're open from dawn till dusk and free for recreation of all types. Birding, fishing, kayaking, and many of our lands are open to traditional hunting. So I'd like to tell you just a little bit about the Rangeley Lakes region. So in the region, we have six major lakes, Rangeley Lake among them and Moose Lake McGundig right across from us. About 112 lakes and ponds, I think, in total. And five rivers we consider to be some of the best rivers in Maine and some of the best brook trout habitat in the United States. An interesting thing about Rangeley that's becoming better known is that we sit in the way in Maine's Western Mountains which sit in the middle of the longest continuous temperate forest in North America. And in the future, this area is going to get more and more attention for its biodiversity, its wildlife, and its resilience in the face of climate change. Let me just say a few words about Rangeley Lake's Heritage Trust. So we're one of many, many land trusts in Maine and in the United States. Our mission is to conserve land for the benefit of the community and future generations. So we're responsible when we say land for the lands and waters of this region. We own about 5,000 acres. We manage another 9,000 acres. And Roel is looking to see how we can engage the community because we believe in the idea that there's no real conservation long-term in this country without community engagement. So we spend a whole lot of time engaging the community and activities both around conservation and outdoor recreation. When it comes to water and the lakes and rivers, for the first year ever, we're employing a river ambassador on the Rapid River and the McGowley River to represent the interests of the river and the interest of conservation in general. Beyond that, we have about 60 to 100 volunteers every year who monitor for water quality and clarity on the lake and we employ three to five courtesy boat inspectors to inspect boats and educate the public about introducing or not introducing invasive species into our lakes, which are some of the best, cleanest, most beautiful lakes in the country. My name is Kevin Sennett. My wife and I and daughter run Rangeley Region Lake Cruises. We've been off in cruises here on Rangeley Lake for the past 12 years now. It's our 12th year. We just enjoy getting our guests and visitors out. This is, we feel anyway, one of the ways that families, particularly you can get out on the boat, groups of six, eight people that come up to the area to learn about the beautiful lakes of Rangeley, the mountains, and of course, viewing wildlife, the loons in particular. A very occasional rare, I should say, moose swimming across the lake, which we've had a couple of three times, but primarily the bald eagles, the common loons, especially when they have their chicks and some of the other waterfowl that we see on the lakes. So it's fun to get them out. We also do a lot of history of the Rangeley area, which is of course, longstanding with the railroads, the old hotels that were all on the lakes, steam boats that steamed on the lake. So we mix history with the outdoor, waterfowl wildlife that we tend to see here. And of course, like every business in town, promote the area and market and recommend other areas for people to see, go out and hike, visit their heritage trust properties for hiking. I also coordinate the Rangeley Lake annual loon count for Maine Audubon. We've been doing that now for three years. I range for volunteers on the lake to spot the loons from the shoreline on the third Saturday every July for the annual loon count. And then I will take some of a group of people out on the boat to cover areas that aren't covered by Lakeshore volunteers. So we have 100% coverage on Rangeley Lake for the annual loon count, which is pretty impressive. 32 loons we counted last year that Saturday morning, an unbelievable number for Rangeley Lake. I do wanna mention the Heritage Trust this year has assumed the role as a Region 11 coordinator for the entire area, not just Rangeley Lake, but the many lakes and ponds in the area. Elena, I believe is her name, is volunteered or has taken that responsibility on, which is very nice for coordinating the count of the loons. So we do loon education cruises and photography cruises as well. So it's all part of trying to promote our region to guests, obviously to get them to come to our beautiful area and hopefully come up and stay and enjoy Rangeley Lake the rest of us too. Sick, thank you for sticking with us. I wanna thank a lot of people for making that happen. The Rangeley Lake Heritage Trust, of course, Maine Mountain Media who went out and filmed that on a very short notice that was filmed this past weekend and they put it all together, edited it all together, put the music in, et cetera, just in the last couple of days and so thank you so much to Maine Mountain Media. They are online at MaineMountainMedia.com if you wanna go check out their other work or hire them for a project. Also wanna thank, of course, Kevin Sinit and Rangeley Region Lakes Cruises and Kayaking. If you are coming to the festival next year or up in Rangeley for any time, please go jump on a boat with them. They're at rangeley-lakes.com and of course, thank you to Biodiversity Research Institute, BRI and DIF and W, Maine State Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife for coming out and educating us. We have some time left and I want to bring on my colleague, Tracy Hart. Tracy, who I'm asking to start your video now is a wildlife ecologist at Maine Audubon. Hello, everyone. Hi. Hi, I can hear you. Thanks for having me. Thanks for coming on a little bit last minute. So I wanna open it up now to, well, I'll let Tracy introduce herself and introduce the work she does for Maine Audubon and for our loon count. If you have questions for Tracy or for anybody, for me, about loons, please put them in the chat below and we will get to it. So, Tracy, please introduce yourself. Great, thank you. Yeah, I'll keep it short, just ask questions, but yeah, my name's Tracy Hart and I've been on staff at Maine Audubon for about a year now. Been through one loon count season. So I'm the coordinator of the Maine Loon Project in addition to some other projects involving forest songbirds. And so the thing that we're doing now is we've gotten our packets out to all of our regional coordinators and are getting ready as 10 materials out to about over 1,300 loon counters. So they will fan out across more than 350 lakes and count moons on the third Saturday of July from 7 to 730. And from the count, we're able to get a population estimate for the southern half of the state. We also count lakes in the northern half of the state. We just don't have enough coverage to get a full population estimate up there, hoping to change that with your help. So if anyone's interested, we'd love to bring you on to the loon count. Yeah, Kevinson has done an amazing job of getting full coverage on a huge lake, like the Lake. And we're really excited to have Alaina McNally this year coordinating for the entire region, which includes Mooslick, McGuntick and many other lakes in the area. So with that, we also run, I think Danielle had mentioned that we are partnering with Revenland Fisheries and Wildlife with a grant from Maine Outdoor Heritage Fund to do a lead buyback program. So you can go to three different retailers currently, five in our pilot program by the end of the year. And you can submit an ounce of lead tackle and get a $10 voucher to buy some non-led alternatives. Yeah, so I guess that's probably a good introduction and be excited to just answer questions about the loon population or anything else. Sure, and if you have questions, please put them in the chat. Thanks, Tracy. I have one question for you based on one of the comments. Elizabeth said, the boaters on Lovewell's pond in Freiburg intrude on loon families and nesting sites. Can you talk a little bit, Tracy, about how someone can tell if they are too close to a loon or are otherwise not acting appropriately? Yes, yeah, loons, some people ask us how far away they should be from a loon. And instead of giving a set guideline on distance, we say that the loons tell you when you're too close. So there are several behaviors you can look for. If a loon is on the nest and it's crouching down, it looks like it's about to slip into the water. It's heads down, it's really low. That means the loon is disturbed and it's thinking of leaving its nest, which leaves the eggs exposed, either to predators or to the elements. Another way, if you're on the water, you can, they will sometimes do what's called a penguin dance. And that means they've wings and stand up and move across the water. And that is another sign. And often that'll be accompanied by a call called a yodel. So if you hear that, that's another sign. Also if loons are relaxed, they will just be looking around and have their head down. But if you see them really alert with their head raised up, that's another sign that loons are distressed. Paying attention to you. So those are some primary ones. Good info, thanks. So can you talk a little bit? I sort of have a slide queued up. This is a bit of a softball for you. Can you talk about how the loon count and the work that may not have on and our partners have done to work to protect loons and remove some of the threats to them. How that has gone over the life of the loon count. Right, yep. So you are, you're bringing up the slide. I'll bring up the slide whenever you're ready. Perfect, go for it. All right. It'll be easier to show how the population trends have gone with the slide. Okay, so that's the slide. So this information is all derived from loon counters. And it's showing the yellow shows adult loon population from when the loon count started. And this shows 1984. Oh, actually this one's not the current trend. We have 2019 on there, but that's okay. It's similar trend. So it's gone from 1983 to last year. And the adult loon population has increased by about 70% in that time. So it's been a huge success story. And that we attribute that to a bunch of different reasons. One is there, a wake law was put in place. And what that does is has, it wasn't actually derived for loons, but it was to protect shoreline property from erosion. But it boat operators are not allowed to go above wake producing speeds if they're within 200 feet of shore. And that's done a lot to keep nests from flooding and has helped the loon population a lot. We also attribute it to the loon tackle lead band. So right now the scale and use of lead sinkers and lead jigs that are one ounce or less or measuring two and a half inches or less is banned in Maine. And that is addressing one of the leading causes of mortality, adult loon mortality in the state. And then just the actions of local lake associations has done a tremendous amount. So all those eyes and ears who are out there with the loon count and with their lake associations, the actions that they have done to protect loon habitat and to try to get the word out about how to behave around loons, to not disturb them and to improve properties through programs like Lake Smart. Great. Tracy, I have a question from Diane. Are loons protected by law? And what can we do if we see someone harassing them? Yes, they are, yeah. Loons are protected from being harassed. What you should do is call a warden at the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife if you see, they are protected from that harassment. There's also protections under the migratory bird treaty act at the federal level. Great. If you have additional questions, please throw them down in the chat. We have a few minutes left. Tracy, can you talk a little bit more about the lead buyback program? Do you know, I don't want to put you on the spot, which stores are participating in the buyback or where people can bring their tackle? Yeah, I should actually, let me see if I can bring up the flyer so that people can see it. Do you think I can share my screen? Sure. Hold on one second. Yeah. Yeah, before you do that. I saw that Hannah's on, too. So I mean, she might be able to save us here. Sorry, I'm putting you on the spot. And now it looks like she may have frozen. So anyway, look at mainautobahn.org under our loon count pages. You can see the flyer about where to bring back your tackle to get a voucher for safe tackle, non-led tackle. This is a really important issue. Oh, and we got the question from, oh, Tracy, are you still there? It looks like Tracy is frozen. But Mary asked a question, although the loon number of, this is a question we were hoping for. And it's a bummer that Tracy is frozen for this. This is a question we get a lot. Although the number of loon adults has increased quite a bit, the number of loon chicks has not increased by much. Why is that? And I really hope Tracy comes back to help answer that question, which I know she thinks about a lot. So let's save that, because I know she's trying to get back in. Let me see what the next question is. Are there other laws for private reduction for loons other than the migratory bird treaty? So thanks, Nick. Loons are protected under state law. One law that may not have helped pass a few years ago, as you've been hearing, is the law that prohibits lead, bear-led sinkers and jigs. The issue with how loons get lead in their body is that loons don't have teeth, right? And so they need a way to sort of grind up their food that they eat. They eat these fish whole. And so what they do is they dive down to the bottom of the lake bed and gather little stones and rocks and get them in their gizzard. And so when they eat some food, the food goes down to the gizzard and these rocks using this muscle sort of crush it all up. It's like sort of a teeth inside their body. As folks are fishing and they are using lead fishing tackle and it drops off their line, which we all know happens, that those lead things will just sit at the bottom and look exactly like any other pebble or rock at the bottom of the lake. So loons will actually dive down, trying to gather stones to get in their gizzard and they will eat lead, they will ingest lead that way. That's how loons are getting in their bodies. So anyway, one of the laws we passed was to outlaw, let's try to outlaw lead fishing tackle. There's a bit of a loophole in that bill, which was passed a while ago, which does not prohibit painted lead. So if it's just sort of the regular unpainted silver, that's banned, but stuff with paint on it is not. That's a loophole that we need clothes. And so when we're talking about other laws that provide protection, closing a loophole for painted lead is something that we need to work on because the paint does nothing to sort of inhibit the danger of lead. So let me see here, thank you, Hannah, for jumping on. Participating retailers in the lead buyback program, Indian Hill Trading Post, which is in Moose Head Lake, DAGS, Bait Shop in Auburn and Backwoods, Bait and Tackle in Chesterville. So thank you very much. If you're living near and near those places and want to do something good for loons, bring them on back. Are there places in Maine where there's a big gap in the water? Are there places in Maine where there's a big gap in loon counters that our audience members could help? That's a question for Tracy. So I'll make sure to ask her that if she can get back on. Let me see if she has rejoined. I don't see her. Kevin, Maine has the second largest population of common loons in the country, but behind Minnesota, where's the state bird? Way to go Maine, we're doing it. And it's a population that's on the rise up. And Nick, yours do other laws for technical loons from harassing. That's another one for Tracy. So sorry for the technical snafu there with Tracy. I will make sure to get her all these questions and we will reach back out. Perhaps I can answer them on tomorrow morning's session. And that may be a good transition right now. Let's transition. We're ending the first morning of the Range of the Birding Festival. I want to thank you all very much. And David, maybe if I could have you jump back on the video. There you go. Thank you so much for joining us. That's just fantastic. We've had over 100 people all morning on the festival, which is great. Again, this is no substitute we realized for the actual in-person festival. We hope you can join us next year, which will be exponentially more fun. And we won't have to worry about technical snafu's or any of that stuff. We'll just be looking for birds. And a reminder quickly of the schedule tomorrow morning. We're starting again at 9 a.m. with Bois. Yours truly. Talking about populations of Maine birds that have risen and fallen over the years and why that's happening. So that'll be at nine to 10. I'm starting at 10. We have a rangely-based photographer, Nick Ledley, touchthewildphotos.com, Outstanding Wildlife Photographer. He will be giving a Wildlife Photography 101 presentation, which will be great. And then finally from 11 to noon is Professor Brian Olson from the University of Maine, our keynote speech, talking about lumps and splits, birding field guides, and species of birds. Brian is a very entertaining guy, very entertaining speaker, so we're looking forward to that. I did see one question. Do we know the dates for next year's festival? I don't think so, we know yet. David's shaking his head, we don't, but it'll be this early part of June, first weekend, somewhere around there. So keep that timeframe open. David, do you wanna say a few more words when we head out? I just wanna thank you and all of our presenters and everybody for joining us. And please come on up this summer too, if you want a nice socially distanced experience of birding. Doug really pointed out well what a wealth we have up here, so thanks everyone for being part of this. All right, thank you. Well, with that, I'm gonna end morning one of the Range of the Birding Festival. Thank you again so much for joining. There is a different Zoom link for tomorrow morning session, so that should be found in the registration email that you got back from the Heritage Trust. And if not, we'll be posting links on Maine Audubon's social media, Facebook and Twitter tomorrow morning. So we hope we see you back. Have a great day and thanks again.